Basic Snowflake Forms

(from SnowCrystals.com)

Although no two snowflakes are exactly alike, snow crystal forms usually fall into
several broad categories. You can find a more descriptive guide in the book –
The Snowflake: Winter’s Secret Beauty.

Stellar Dendrites
Dendrite means "tree-like", which describes the multi-branched appearance of these
snow crystals. Stellar dendrites have six symmetrical main branches and a large
number of randomly placed sidebranches. They can also be large, perhaps 5mm in
diameter.
Although they have complex shapes, each stellar dendrite is a single crystal of ice.
The molecular ordering of the water molecules is the same from one side of the crystal
to the other.

Sectored Plates
What identifies these crystals are the numerous ice ridges that seem to divide the
plate-like arms into sectors -- hence the name. Like the stellar dendrites, sectored
plates are flat, thin slivers of ice that grow into in a stunning diversity of complex
shapes.
Hollow Columns
Plate-like snow crystals get the most attention, but columnar crystals are the main
constituents of many snowfalls. The columns are hexagonal, like a wooden pencil, and
they often form with conical hollow features in their ends.

Needles
Columnar crystals can grow so long and thin that they look like ice needles.
Sometimes the needles contain thin hollow regions, and sometimes the ends split into
additional needle branches.

Spatial Dendrites
Not all snowflakes form as thin flat plates or slender columns. Spatial dendrites are
made from many individual ice crystals jumbled together. Each branch is like one arm
of a stellar crystal, but the different branches are oriented randomly.
Capped Columns
These crystals started out growing as columns, but then suddenly switched to plate-
like growth. This happens when a crystal is blown into a region with a different
temperature.

Rimed Crystals
Clouds are made of small water droplets. Droplets that freeze onto a snow crystal are
called rime, and these pictures show crystals that picked up a little rime and a lot of rime.
Sometimes a snowflake turns into just a ball of rime, which is then called graupel, or soft hail.

Irregulars
Snowflakes can have a hard life blowing about in a turbulent cloud, so that many
arrive on the ground broken, ill-formed, and generally in bad shape. Warm snowfalls
tend to bring the most irregular snowflakes, especially when the wind is blowing hard.

The pictures above were taken by

Patricia Rasmussen using a special
snowflake microscope built by Kenneth
Libbrecht. For more information, see
snowcrystals.com.